Page 3 of Deadly Night
I lay here tossing and turning for far too long, wishing for a dream man. For one of my favorite characters to come to life and seduce me.
Eventually, I give up and go back down to the kitchen to take melatonin. I grab my bottle out of the cabinet and dump two gummies onto my palm. I chew them up, but they get hung in the back of my dry throat. I pad across the room to the sink to get a glass of water.
The clock on the stove reads three am. The witching hour.
From the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of something or someone in the window other than my reflection. My heart leaps to my throat. I tell myself it’s just the wind, or my mind playing tricks on me. I watch and I wait with my heart pounding, waiting for it to happen again. Wanting it to happen again.
For a second, I’m sure I see something. Not a face, not exactly, but the outline of a head and shoulders, broad and unmoving, right behind the glass. A dark figure watching me.
Pressing my forehead to the cold pane of glass, I squint, staring out into the dark night. There’s nothing or no one there. The woods beyond the edge of the backyard are a smear of black dusted in silver, branches clattering in the wind as more snow blows in.
“You’re imagining things,” I speak aloud to myself. I shake my head and turn to go back to bed when I hear it. A dullthump of something hitting the back door. My pulse jumps with excitement.
Slowly, I pad to the door, drawing back the curtain that covers the glass.
There’s no one there.
A smarter girl would call someone, but I’ve always been drawn to the dark.
To spooky things that go bump in the night.
I crack the door open, and a package falls into the doorway.
It’s small and rectangular. Covered in brown paper secured with black electrical tape.
I pick it up and shut the door in a hurry.
The gift — at least I’m assuming that’s what this is — is heavier than expected and smells of pine and cigarette smoke. Like my phantom. My ghost.
I place it on the kitchen table gently as though it’s a bomb that will detonate if my movements are too rough, too sudden.
Flicking on the light over under the hood of the stove, I stare at the brown paper, seeing smudges of something sticky, like honey or tree sap.
I grab a dull butter knife from the drawer and cut the paper down one side and smile at what is revealed.
A book with gorgeous painted edges that remind me of the forest behind my house.
A shiver courses down my spine as I remove it from the paper.
It’s a dark romance.
One I’ve never heard of before. It’s a Christmas-themed book. A murderous one with a bloody axe on the cover. I hug it to my chest, inhaling the scent of pine and smoke, wondering who it is from.
My cell vibrates from upstairs, the faint sound humming as it carries down the stairs.
There’s one message.
Unknown:Merry Christmas, Hadley. Saw this, and I thought of you and all the things I want to do to you.
Heat warms my cheeks. I flip through the pages, skimming and wondering exactly which scene they mean.
Four
Present day
Mistletoe Pines Gazette
The family of a local teen who was murdered on Christmas Eve four years ago is hosting their annual candlelight vigil at the community center. They ask all friends and family to join them in remembering Scotty Mann.
